Occupants Easily File into Seating Rows in Pathfinder 2022.3

Occupants entering seating rows can now do so more realistically and with only one additional setting. Seating models in stadiums, theaters, and railcars often make it difficult to adjust the seating geometry in such a way that allows a seeking occupant to move past a waiting occupant. Imagine a theater latecomer who needs to find their seat among a filled row. Occupants can now temporarily obtain a sort of "ghost" status to enable others to pass by them in a way that mimics the real-world behavior of shuffling past seated occupants.

What are some applications of this feature?

When modeling ingress, the flow of occupants into a model (whether as part of a predecessor to evacuation modeling or a study all its own), row seating has previously had its challenges. The space occupied by the seats is not considered walkable area and bottlenecks get created when occupants are not all flowing in the same direction through a row. Occupants who have found their destination and began waiting become an obstacle for other occupants trying to move through. This new feature removes the artificial bottleneck by representing occupants naturally sliding out of the way for each other.

How do I implement this feature?

The Wait action has been expanded to include a Wait Mode with three options including Avoid Others, Wait in place with collisions, and Wait in place without collisions. Selecting this last option will allow other occupants to pass through while in this Wait Mode. They will not move from their targeted waypoint during this Wait behavior.

For occupants to seek specific seats within row seating, representing any sort of assigned seating situation, Occupant Targets are used.

When can I access this new feature?

Occupant row filling will be provided as a feature of Pathfinder 2022.3 which releases on December 7. For more feature previews, subscribe to our newsletter.